


we defy augury

by seinmit



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Birds, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24352186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/pseuds/seinmit
Summary: Two months after moving in with Steve, Bucky woke up unable to understand the birds.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 78
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	we defy augury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intoxicatelou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoxicatelou/gifts).



Two months after moving in with Steve, Bucky woke up unable to understand the birds. 

They were there, and in some sense he heard them—the piercing twitters and cries, the song-without-melody, an ambitious whistle swooping in and dominating the symphony. When he looked outside his window, the bird feeder remained, clamped to the railing of his fire escape, and a few discarded seeds stuck to the metal, evidence that birds existed in this world and wanted good things to eat. 

But he heard only natural sounds, intended for other birds—noise that he did not have the evolutionary background to interpret. He was deaf to comfort or warning, hints or reassurance. He only distantly recognized the mocking bird’s authoritative cry, meaningless as the oceanic sound of passing cars.

He sat cross-legged on his bed, staring out and ears straining, and still heard nothing. 

* * *

The early days of his recovery were mostly lost to him, brain too damaged by drugs and electroshock, but one thread of memories stood out. 

The hellicarrier crash had annihilated the natural life of the water. When he dragged the Captain out, his own breathing echoed the sputtering of the near-drowned man, both attempting to restart normal rhythms. The fire across the bank crackled as it burned, where the machine crashed into trees. There weren’t any birds singing. 

The soldier stood over the body, facing away from the water, frozen. He didn’t know what to do—barely even understood that this was a moment for a decision, barely understood what a decision was conceptually. He did not want to leave the man he had saved, and he did not understand that, either. 

His training reasserted its grip on his mind, in the absence of thought. 

Report, it said. Report. 

He knew his rendezvous point. He should report, he thought, not because he could weigh the options and decide, but because it was the only thought he had.

The unnatural silence of the world around him echoed the silence of his mind, the urgency of sirens in the background seeming less like noise and more like adrenaline. The unconscious man on the riverbank was drawing him in, like a penny spiraling around drain, and he yearned to fall in—he knew he couldn't. Action was necessary, even if he didn’t understand what it was to act. 

A fluttering noise, a piercing sound like air pushed out of a plastic object, and a bold white bird intruded on the quiet. The gull walked with stick-legs, too small for his thick body. He opened his mouth and yelled—the disturbance of his home upset him and he dripped with _scorn_ at HYDRA’s grand schemes. What are you doing, the bird scoffed.

The soldier knew that the gull had no respect for HYDRA and its games. He had business here and any organization that had no care for collateral damage wasn’t one anyone should follow. You’d regret going back, the bird foretold. You have the chance to regret having been ever there, if you don’t report in. 

The bird’s message was clear, and so the soldier ran. 

* * *

He’d lost a lot of things in his life, but loss was a hard thing to master. He strained to listen—maybe they were just being drowned out by city noises, maybe he just had to pay more attention. When a starling settled at his bird feeder, snatching seeds to eat and jumping around with urgent grace, he leaned forward—but there was no meaning in the movement. 

A knock on the door and, in what felt like a coincidence, the starling flew away—he kept staring at the place where it had been, his mind caught in double-vision. The rhythm had been wrong—a knock and then a second-too-long and then the bird flew away. But he could see a version of the moment, exactly the same in the particulars but laden with metaphysical significance, where it was a premonition. 

"Buck?" Muffled through the door. "You okay?" 

It was late enough now that the riotous morning birdsong had faded under the honks and squeals of human things. He wanted to gather the memory of it around like a cloak, reassuring him that he was making the right call, that it would turn out in the end—but there was nothing there. 

He didn’t know how to reply, but he had to say something. Steve knocked again. He was skilled at concealing the limitless depth of his concern, but Bucky could sense it just underneath the surface. Steve seemed sometimes like a human skin stretched over an abyss of worry, and Bucky didn’t think he sufficed to fill it. Every day, Steve pulled himself thinner in the effort to hold his intensity back; he was going to snap.

"I’m fine," he said. "Just a late start for today."

Unfolding himself from the bed felt dangerous when he didn’t have the good-morning-memories of bird reassurance, but he had to go to Steve. 

When he opened the door, his unsteady smile had a mirror in Steve’s. 

"Do you want pancakes?’ Steve asked. 

Steve didn’t like sweet things in the morning—he had never had much of a sweet tooth, but especially not early. It was Bucky’s day to cook, anyway. They’d worked out a division of labor in their new household. It was remarkable mostly for how different it was from their old one; they had few of the same constraints and a lot of fresh ones. 

"Sure," Bucky said. He felt a strange adrenaline for something so small. Steve smiled, grateful for any way he could help—Steve wanted to do so much more than Bucky would let him. Bucky watched his back, the thick muscles of it, the way it moved underneath his shirt. He liked to look at him.

The pancakes were good. Steve nudged the tin of syrup closer to Bucky, after Bucky’s first pour was over-cautious. They both knew that he wanted more, but Steve had learned to not say anything. 

Bucky glanced at the tin, and then at the pancakes, and poured out more. It tasted better when it was dripping with sweetness. 

* * *

Pigeons had flown away from his approach, telling him he looked alarming and suggesting he find some civilian clothes. He had seen a pair of them intently eating someone’s leftover scone, warbling at each other, and he thought, yes, he should look for signs of this Bucky Barnes.

The cheeps and chirps of starlings in the National Mall congratulated him for finding the Smithsonian exhibit, and as he watched them flit around in the fountain garden, they told him he wasn’t ready yet to see this Steve in person. 

His memory supplied other birds—the shocking red growth on the head of the Dong Tao chickens of Vietnam in retrospect said, these people didn’t deserve to die. The buzzards after battle reproached him for his weakness and obedience, hooked beaks tugging red strips of flesh. 

He ordered his life around the communications from the birds around him and kept their secrets in his breast. Even as he recovered, both on his own and under the care of the Wakandans, he didn’t reveal this. He didn’t want to lose the birds. The cuckoo voices he heard from his room in the palace affirmed this choice and the kingfisher, displaying the brilliant blue of his chest-feathers, reassured him that the Wakandans were good. They might not understand, but they would take good care of him. The omens said this was a good decision.

Bucky had plenty of symptoms that made his life difficult—the Wakandans marveled that his brain looked in imaging like he was an advanced dementia patient. Some parts of it atrophied, and others inflated, trying to do unfamiliar tasks and pick up the slack. But he fed himself and kept himself clean, falling back on a combination of his habit of stoic silence when in doubt and the goodwill of the people around him. 

He got better, but even though he knew the comfort he took in the meanings of the birds was likely just another symptom of his broken brain, he didn’t want to lose it. He liked the fact that when he decided to go back to New York with Steve, after Steve negotiated a truce with Tony, the harsh squawk of a parrot in the jungle canopy made his decision to return for him. His human healers didn’t want to push him one way or another, but the parrot was brash enough to say, good idea, you should do it.

* * *

After breakfast, he called Shuri. With the time change, he had to call early in the day, and the knowledge of her impending sleep rushed him. When she picked up, he wasn’t sure what to ask. 

It was no matter, though. She would happily fill the silence with the minutiae of her life. He listened and enjoyed hearing about the new jacket she bought, the new suit she’d made for her brother, the innovations in the routing technology for the automatic cars that she was desperate to beat Tesla to market with.

With delicacy, she circled back to him. 

"How’s the smog treating you?" 

Bucky snorted. "You may not believe this, but New York is sparkling compared to what it used to be. Coal is dirty as hell." 

He didn’t remember much more than flashes of his missions, but one came to him then—the New York City skyline concealed under a thick reddish haze, early morning light refracted through particulate in the air. Hydra had set him loose to kill a Civil Rights leader. The details of the hit were lost, but he remembered the foreboding gloom of sunrise, indistinct buildings swimming in filthy clouds. 

"That doesn’t mean it’s clean now," she said. "Or that you’re enjoying it."

She was on to him. He wasn’t much for talking anymore—when he had been in Wakanda, he enjoyed spending time with her, but more often than not he would just show up in her lab and lift things she couldn’t, hold a device steady for her to fix. Nothing that she couldn’t have done with her arsenal of lab assistants and robots, but when words felt hard to wrangle, he could express his gratitude with his presence in her space. Calling her was out of character. 

"My brain scans, when I left." He paused. She didn’t let him off the hook and kept her expectant silence. "Were they normal?" 

"No," she said. She didn’t seem troubled by it. "Well, of course not—your serum makes you distinctly abnormal. But even if we use Captain Rogers as a baseline, no. You still had more healing to do. But the trend line was good. Every time we looked, your brain was better than the last time." 

Can you turn it back, he wanted to ask. Is there a way to hold on to a particular symptom if I want to keep it. 

"Have you noticed a change?" She was so sharp and, unlike Steve, she had no interest in courteous restraint. 

"How long will it be in flux?" 

It wasn’t what he wanted to ask, but when he got the question out, the urgency of it hit him. He needed to know what would happen next. He needed to know when he could be secure with this novel version of himself. 

"Brains change," she said. "It’s what they do. Hopefully the damage that HYDRA caused will fade sooner rather than later, but if you’re asking me when your brain will stop surprising you—"

He couldn’t see her shrug, but he heard it. 

"Well, the answer to that is when you die. Nothing is truly stable until then." 

It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but he could hear the truth in it. It was the only answer he would get. An irrational annoyance built in his chest—why couldn’t she just tell him what to do. Why couldn’t she just straightforwardly predict? He wanted that certainty. 

"Thanks," he said. He tried to keep his annoyance out of his tone. 

"I’ve set up a meeting with Dr. Xhe," she said. His phone dinged against his ear—she had a habit of just adding things directly to his calendar. "You can talk about it with her." 

He made some vague noise of false agreement and, audibly rolling her eyes, she told him to stop wasting her time. He would be worried about it, but her affection was clear. 

When he glanced back out the window at the bird feeder, after she hung up on him, the bright red cardinal surprised him. He was beautiful, startling red. Very different from the more common dreary colors in this part of the world—reminiscent of the outrageous birds of the Wakandan jungle. He wanted to find meaning in him, but strained against the mundane reality of a bird, eating seed and suet.

Disquieted, he looked away. 

* * *

He had seen a parakeet in a perfectly normal Brooklyn tree, not long after he moved (back) to New York. Steve was busy mending fences and burning bridges, depending on if the relationship needed kindling or would make kindling in his slash-and-burn renovation of the Accords. He was out of the house a lot, but Bucky didn't mind the quiet. And when he was around, he took Bucky on walks where they could be quiet together. 

Steve was palpably concerned about Bucky, with how his mind was working, but after a few cautious attempts to press him, Steve subsided. Bucky made compliance into its own form of martial art, agreeing and smiling and slipping out of any conversation he didn't actually want to be in. Particularly blatant moments of avoidance made Steve smile in a way that Bucky thought meant that this was an unexpected connection to the Bucky that had used to be. He didn't remember well enough. 

It had been on one of those walks that the saw the first parakeet in New York. It had been a brilliant green, standing out against the dried-up tree—it had a white belly, puffed up against the chill, and appealingly curvy head. it was cute and it didn't feel right at all in New York. 

He stopped to stare. The bird hopped up to another branch and found a friend to squawk at—there was a mound of sticks in that Brooklyn tree, and a bevy of other parrots. Their blue tailfeathers twitched, half-hidden by the green overcoats.

"Do you see that?" 

Steve had stopped when Bucky stopped, but his eyes were on Bucky's face. Only with prompting did he follow Bucky's gaze—to the nest and the birds. His mouth opened in surprised delight and Bucky's stomach swooped in relief. Steve could see them. 

Of course he can, one of the parrots said. Don't be ridiculous. He can see a lot of things that you can't. How could you think you could see something on your own? 

You couldn't even see yourself when he could. 

"Oh, wow," Steve said. His voice was smiling and Bucky's fingers itched to give him something to draw with, a flash of texture more than memory—the slide of a pencil, passing through his fingertips and into Steve's. 

Bucky's eyes were drawn to Steve's face just in time to watch the frown build, starting on his forehead. 

"You don't think they escaped from somewhere, do you? Can birds like that survive in Brooklyn? We could call someone."

You have a good one, the parrots said. There was amusement in the voice that the chirps sketched out between them, the affirmation coming from one and all of them. Bucky didn't wonder if they were okay—he didn't think that was a question the parrots could answer, and he didn't like to think about why. 

"I don't know," Bucky said, because he didn't. He had no experience with anything more than watching birds. "But it looks like they made a home? That's saying something." 

They had great big hooked beaks, an edge of lethality to their cheerful jolly roundness. Another several flew up and then they all started screeching at each other. Shockingly, horrifyingly loud. 

Sometimes you just gotta scream, they said to him. Even in New York, sometimes you have to go out in public and yell. 

Bucky found himself laughing: full-on, bent over, hard enough his eyes stung. Steve laughed along with him, and Bucky knew it was out of the sheer joy of sharing it: not even Bucky understood entirely. 

You have a good one, the omen said to him. Look at us all together, look at our home. But Bucky went quiet again, after they laughed themselves out. 

"They're so loud," he said, a half-hearted attempt at explanation. Steve's were shining as he looked at Bucky, enough that Bucky looked back at the birds to still his squirming stomach. 

Bucky heard the vibration of Steve's phone in his hand. 

"Nat said that there are parrots in Brooklyn now," Steve said. "They're fine." 

Of course we're fine, they scoffed. Bucky watched one twist its whole body to pick up a twig and then tug it free, put it back somewhere else. Bucky didn't understand the difference. 

Steve stood there and let Bucky look for long enough that Bucky was unsettled, worried that Steve would want him to explain something he didn't yet have words for. But Steve seemed happy to watch; he had a peacefulness to him that Bucky hadn't seen in a long time. 

He doesn't care what you're thinking about if you laugh, they said. Get good at faking that, and you'll never have to answer any questions.

The next day, Steve brought home a bird-feeder, specially designed for use on fire escapes, and made no comment when he gave it to Bucky.

* * *

He considered going for walk, to see if he'd hear other birds, but he didn't want the confirmation of absence. It was easier to worry about it than confirm, one way or another; he'd known that for a long time. "How’s Shuri?" Steve asked. His blue eyes were concerned, but his tone was mild. When Bucky entered the living room, he set the sketchbook he’d been using down and leaned forward. He was avid, his entire body straining to say more—Steve had a lot of trouble being nonchalant, but he was trying harder than Bucky would have even thought possible.

"She’s good," Bucky said. Bucky went to the bookshelf to avoid having to look at Steve. He ran his eyes over each spine—it was an eclectic mix of history and fiction. There was a small section of novels that had been Bucky’s old favorites; he didn’t remember them and hadn’t picked them up, but that was how Steve had explained their sudden appearance. 

Steve’s gaze was a weight on his back. 

"Is it a bad day?" 

Bucky stiffened, but before he could respond, Steve kept talking. "Sorry—I mean. Sorry. I know you don’t like talking about it. But. I mean. If I can help. I would be happy to listen." 

There were archives of memories hidden from Bucky, about Steve and how Steve used to be, but even if he couldn’t remember the details, some part of him knew that the anxiety in Steve’s tone was uncharacteristic. It was normal for Steve to reach out, bulldog in his love, but the tentativeness—Steve wasn’t used to restraint and Bucky hadn’t ever made him need it. They’d lost their old intimacy. Bucky wished he knew if it'd be coming back. He knew, with a sick sort of certainty that was all from him, that he had to reach out first—but Steve had been there for him for a long time. Trying to lean on him would give that a chance to change.

He read the titles of the books in front of him. _A Martian Odyssey. Brave New World. Out of the Silent Planet._

The old habits of his brain wanted to reshape the words into fortune-telling. He wanted to know what he should do, what would make everything better. He didn’t want to make the choice on his own. He’d been reticent with Steve—a near-silent planet of their apartment. The time in HYDRA, that was like a Martian Odyssey. This was a brave new world. 

The shape of it felt artificial—he could see the scaffolding his brain made, the connections he forced. Any meaning in this was meaning he gave it, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted the universe to deliver him the answers. He wanted to be ordered. He needed fate. 

He had been reticent too long. 

"Sorry," Steve said, again. "I’m going to run out to the store. Do you want anything?" 

Before Bucky could find an answer, Steve left—he knew at this point not to wait for one. Steve would likely bring Bucky back a present—he often did—but Bucky could never ask. The sound of their front door closing pounded in Bucky’s chest; Steve was losing patience. 

Steve would leave—or at least there was no certainty to him staying. There was no certainty to his continued care. Bucky couldn’t rely on it, because loss was what happened to him and the only thing Bucky trusted was inevitability. 

It would be taken from him, he would lose it, he didn’t deserve it—the only thing he found convincing in this moment was his own foggy insubstantiality, the sense that he would drift apart into a million pieces. That Steve would leave or be forced to leave. That it would fall apart. 

His breathing was so quick in his chest it clogged his throat—he was going to choke on himself, on the thick coal-smog he pretended was a person. He killed and would eventually be killed. The animal concerns for food, for safety, for love—that wasn’t something for him, not without the slipstream of his birds follow through the smoke.

There was a moment where he was convinced he was dying, right in this moment—a great giant reached into his chest and squeezed his heart, and it was almost a relief. He needed certainty, and he was certain, completely confident, that he was going to die. 

The door opened again—too quick. Bucky flinched and realized that he was on the floor, his forehead pressed to the hard edge of their bookcase. 

"Buck, I’m sorry, but we have to— _Bucky._ "

Steve was at his side, his hand hovering over Bucky’s back. He didn’t touch, not unrequested, but Bucky’s skin heated from Steve’s warmth, even through his cotton t-shirt, even from a distance. He wanted the touch, but asking for it— that might be the thing that killed him, Steve taking away his touch after Bucky revealed how badly he wanted it. 

But if he was going to die anyway—

Bucky leaned back, pushing himself into Steve’s touch like a cat. With that, Steve abandoned restraint—he hugged Bucky and squeezed tight. Bucky gasped, like breath was forced out of him, but he burrowed further into Steve. He was warm and solid, his body different and sturdy. He was Steve, and he still liked spicy aftershave.

"You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. Everything will be okay." 

Nonsense words of reassurance—like the titles of the books or the serenade of birds, it wasn’t supposed to be meaningful. Steve didn’t know the future, not any more than Bucky did. But unlike the birds and the books and all the things that Bucky used to rely on to do his decision-making for him, Steve was a human person and Steve was choosing to give him this message. Steve wanted to reassure him. He wanted Bucky to think things would be okay, even if he couldn’t guarantee it. 

Bucky wrapped both of his arms around Steve in return—one his mother gave him and the other from Shuri. 

"Do you promise?" 

"Yes," Steve said. "I promise. It will be okay. I’ve got you. I promise." 

It was both a lie and a truth. Steve wasn’t omniscient; he was as subject to the whims of fate as anyone. But promises were true mostly because they could be broken. Gravity was inevitable, death was inevitable: it wasn't inevitably going to be okay. They both knew full well that their shared life wasn't permanent and Bucky had been paralyzed by the fear of that.

I promise to be here, Steve said, and in this moment Bucky loved him back precisely because he knew that Steve would fight everything the universe threw at them to make it happen. He vowed against fate, despite it, and Bucky clung to him with the same stubborn desperation.

He didn’t yet have words for his own promise, but he tipped his head up and kissed Steve’s lips. His heart pounded—he wasn't sure what Steve would do, this was a risk, he had no memory of this or even the absence of this—but when Steve sighed and kissed him back, the heart-pounding fear of losing him felt like flying, exhilarating and alive and exactly where he wanted to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes: Bucky is arguably having [illusions or pseudohallucinations, as opposed to hallucinations.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4515540/) However, doctors [sometimes classify hearing meaning in bird noises as an auditory hallucination.](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.schres.2019.02.009) It is a fairly common form of illusion/hallucination--if you're going to hallucinate animals talking to you, it will probably be birds. Some people with hallucinations experience them as [pleasant.](https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/30/1/163/1895397) Psychosis is a fairly common symptom for [Alzheimer's disease](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24103379/) and [PTSD](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17637580), though obviously there are no common symptoms of being repeatedly zapped with an electric chair and I've taken liberties.
> 
> In addition to the Roman practice of fortune-telling with birds, I was also heavily inspired by [this interpretation](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/let-be-an-answer-to-hamlets-question/) of the speech in Hamlet I borrowed the title from: 
> 
> _We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be._


End file.
